Actually it was,
what is the shame in admitting so? It's the same reason Canada never took in many Arabs, Bulgarians, Portuguese, Nigerians, Polynesians during the 1890s; not out of racism, but rather because these people had different cultures and values and, unlike say the Germans, Scandinavians and Ukrainians, didn't have anything useful skillsets in an economy based on cold-climate agriculture and resource extraction.
While there are some Jewish Farmers; the fact of the matter being, there were hardly any to begin with. Even Toronto during the 1940s wasn't really much of a city to speak of, neither were most Canadian cities before the 1960s - hence no reason then to allow in many financially-skilled immigrants regardless of their origin.
For the same reason, Brazil was more interested in recruiting Mediterranean Europeans and Near-Eastern Arabs (Lebanese), as these people were more useful in a tropical-based economy than say bringing in a bunch of lumberjacks and fishermen from Northern Norway who; much like bringing in financial immigrants to 1890s agricultural Canada, wouldn't be able to find employment..